DRINK AND BE SOBER

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 562, 27 November 1915, Page 6

DRINK AND BE SOBER

No one has any business to go &£ 'wrong; always his intelligence """V should be in advance of his act.

; And the one man in ;\vhom ignorance is inexcusable is he who plays with "the wild and shifty forces of alco-|oC-holic drink. That man should be :*f" wise above others; his intelligence kfr should be ever on outpost duty; and •V his first business is to know what when men drink—whether they

drink beer or wine or brandy—they i&'.-.'i drink,alcohol. The sole reason for | the existence of these beverages is

that they provide him who drinks & . them with a greater or less quantity ©f alcohol. They may be disguised l' : with fanciful perfumes and flavours, hidden in a harlequinade of cols ours, but the reason for their ex-

istence is always the same —it is f^alcohol. §0" , „_An immense amount of hypocrisy C-;/; has grown up about the custom and habit of drinking alcoholic beverages. It has been given a free and Jf*/ lordly air, as though there were *k~-y something exceptionally big-heart-ed and unselfish about it. This lie %">' has come, roaring arrogantly, down v-v through the ages. It has got itself '-*/< told in prose and verse; in fact, it > reels through most of the second- " rate literature of every country. Have you not asked yourself—are you not asking yourself now: "Is alcohol a good thing for me?" Possibly you have made many experiments—or one or two. Then : ' you have found—what every man from the honest scientist to the thoughtful barman finds—that alco- £•> hoi is not a good thing for you; in / certain ascertained quantities, being, „ in fact, a bad thing. %-•- So the problem comes to this: "How much can I take without undue harm?" The question cannot be put in a fairer way—in a way more scientific ■ "arid less emotional. It shows that you have a practical mind. You , open, as it were,s a profit and loss i account with alcohol. You do not I*' 1 call it—as I have heard it called—a pandemic plague. You do not lie awake nights cursing the mycoderma. You go about it in a practi- ' cal way. On one side of the account you set down what you lose in moral, mental and physical ways; on the other side —with scru- % pulous fairness—the gains. f ■ For there are gains. / ' Let us get that matter clear once t for all. 1 There are gains, or humanity had - not for so many ages drunk deep—.i you had not been able to look back to the twilight of history and seen (everywhere) mankind at its cups. Something, you know, these winestained generations gained, or they had never paid the bitter price. What are the most apparent gains? You set them down as social cheer, " as the exhilaration that lifts dull mortality to a flashing level, as , forgetfulness—that drowsy forget- • fulness of the actualities of life, which is perhaps the rarest thing a ' man can purchase. You set them all down; for you know that not every drinker seeks only physical and material drunkenness. No; across a world of pitiful attempts at wine-born merriment, you see the poet seeking the blue flower of the au-dela, the dreamer hunting his dream.

Also it makes a man bolder than he is by nature. I have always loved that story of the mouse, who came upon a little pool of whisky spilled upon the floor; he drank and once again; then he cocked up his head, and said: "Where's that cat that was chasing me yesterday?" Mind you, this article is not about the drunkard. It is more interested in the man who thanks Heaven he can drink and be sober. The teetotal scientists, J know, draw horrid pictures of his stomach and his hobnailed liver, along with those of the confirmed drunkard. I refuse to get excited over his stomach and his liver. What interests me is his brain, for the brain —as near as we can come to it—is the man. It is the organ (and the only one) through which I can get in touch with that strange thing, your ISgo—or you with mine. There it is I get vaguely at the tiling that makes you Ethelbert de Courcy (if you are Ethelbert de Courcy) and not Vance Thompson. It is in the brain that alcohol produces the effects whereof there has been something written —the social gaiety and freedom, the memory blinded to unpleasant facts of life, the courage,

and all the rest of it. So my interest (and yours, I trust) is what alcohol does to this essential part of man. Alcohol is intoxicating, that is why men drink it—and for no other reason; and he who would get at the root of intoxication—its pleasure and pain, its i peril and penalty—must study the physiological effects of alcohol on the brain. There he may read its story and its mystery. It is the bej ginning of the entire problem, and | —no matter how far afield one fares into matters civic and economic—its end. Science, not yet omniscient, is content to look upon the brain as being made up of millions of cells, each cell having two nerve-fibres—-one bringing to it nerve motion, and the other conducting energy from it. Certain of these cells, having found they had similar work to do, have formed a kind of communistic society. They group themselves and work together. Endlessly doing the same thing, they become identified with one kind of work. So you have the speech-group, for instance, which attends to the mechanism of talking. These groups are not all of the same age. They were developed little by little, as the varying needs arose. The modern physiologist thinks of them as layer upon layer; this is the theory of Functional Levels. They have been divided into three great levels or planes. It is easy to understand if you bear in mind that the oldest bodily habits —which have now become automatic—belong to the lower plane. Digestion, growth, breathing, bloodcirculation, and the like, are oldestablished functions. The nervegroups that control them are buried deep in the nervous system—so deep the will cannot reach them. There, too, lie the groups that feed the muscles. The higher -functions are on the higher level, the highest on the highest. This upper plane was the most recently acquired in evolution. Therefore, it is the least stable. It is still within the sphere of the will. You may think of it, if you please, as the physical basis of character; and it is not difficult to see how delicately complex—how easily thrown out of order—are these nervous processes, which are concerned in right conduct. The older groups of nervecells which attend to "the automatic mechanism of the vital functions" are buried deep in the lower level, and are not easily perturbed. Those on the highest plane, more recently acquired, still swayed by the will, delicate and complex, are always in peril. And they are not isolated. Peril comes to them from every side; for, they are linked by nerve-fibres to every other group of cells on all the planes. In the exact words of the physiologist, every organ—and every function of the body—is triply represented in the nervous system;— it is represented on each of the three planes. It is not difficult to imagine how extremely delicate must be the mechanism which co-ordinates them. NoW, what I would get at is the exact effect alcohol has upon this fragile machine. The man takes a drink. He takes his bottle of wine, 01 his glass or two or three of whisky. A certain part of the alcohol passes unchanged through the bodily system—and is, from the drinker's viewpoint, economically wasted. The rest mingles with the blood, and is carried through the body. If you vivisect the man who has taken the drink you will find alcohol iii all the large organs; but chiefly you will find it in the nervous system. This is a fierce, deep, and tragic fact. ' There is a sort of dark "affinity" between alcohol and the braintissue. They come together like cats in the night. You will see in a moment the significance of this fact. The first effect of alcohol is on the nerve-centres, or groups, which control and regulate the blood supply. That is where the "stimulation" jcomes in. The heart feels it; its 'action is hurried. The blood-vessels ; in the stomach dilate and glow pleasantly—whereby the man fancifully thinks a drink has warmed ihini up. Then the brain gels the j "stimulation." The nervous processes arc quickened. It seems easier to think. There is a sense of bodily well-being, for "organic congratulations" arc pouring in from the glowing blood-vessels. This is the physical effect —the first one—that makes men love their wine. And now the alcohol, coursing through the system, with the bloodelements, has reached the l>rain; what does it do? Alcohol first attacks—first, mark you, and not last—_lhe -highest'part of man, his moral nature. That is why Burke drank brandy when he would murder a child; it was not, as he thought, to give himself "courage"—it was to silence the protest

'of whatever poor remnant of moral nature was in him. From the top down—that is the way alcohol works on a man; it destroys first what is highest in him —the moral qualities so painfully acquired in the long years of evolution. It is the most delicate part of the mental machinery that is first impaired—that which has been most recently and most fragilely built up in the evolution of character; the moral part. Alcohol, even in minute quantities, is intoxicating—that is, it is toxic—and exactly in proportion to the quantity taken is the impairment of the moral nature. Do not imagine that this pleasurable bodily glow and well-being of distended bloodvessels, which makes for a fatuous kind of altruism, has anything to do with character. By just so much character is impaired. The moral standards sag and sway. The drinking man, of whom 1 write, has let down the bars. Morally he is a looser man. The entire man on that upper plane is loosened and unbraced. The higher processes of the intelligence will go on with delicate precision after—and there, indeed, is the most monstrous peril—after the moral faculties are disordered and defective. If you have studied the man who drinks; if you have studied the girl—in silk stockings—on the porch of the country club, you know this to be indubitably true. Always the moral paralysis is the first physiological effect of alcohol 011 the brain. From the top downwards.

I remember once sitting with Alfred Henry Lewis in a New York tavern, where we drank water. He was curious in the study of humanity, and he had gathered round him, at table, a company of gamblers, pugilists, criminals, politicians, and bad husbands. I had mentioned to him the theory (then new) that drunkenness acts from above, downwards, and, as our company tippled away we studied the process on the speech-level. Almost all improper men affect a nice propriety of speech —notably the New York type. At first the conversation was rather formal, our guests respecting themselves. Little by little the speech loosened; it lost exactitude. Words were made to do double duty. Then the pronunciation stumbled and fell apart. The spoken words were deformed, slurred over, maltreated. The next loss was in intonation—as though the speaking voice were getting out of control. And at last the conversation became purely automatic—a sort of emotional repetition of stock phrases and slang locutions, the mere parrot utterance of ready-made work-combinations that required little more than muscular effort.

Of course, the most serious stage is reached when the co-ordination between the three planes is broken, but that matter belongs to the pathology of alcoholism. For the moment our concern is with the brain of man, and what alcohol does to it.

It first destroys—or impairs—what is most delicate, most complex, and most important. The moment the higher intelligence is touched in its turn by the toxic paralysis—when the judgment goes off guard, and the emotions are uncontrolled —that man will break the moral law. You can trust him neither with a purse nor a woman nor an oath. And if you arc that man you cannot trust yourself. Yon are drunk at the top. And so long as you drink you can't get morally sober, 110.matter how well in hand you keep mind and body. For every successive dose of alcohol goes there first. And every toxic repetition increases the moral disaster. No matter how sober he may be from the highest plane downward, the man who drinks alcohol is morally defective; he may keep wilhin the criminal law because his judgment tells him to, or because his passions do not tempt him out of it; but morally he is impotent—the very organic basis of altruism and good moral feeling in him is destroyed. It is dead of alcoholic paralysis. Why, to broaden and rivet the argument, docs an attractive woman seem for the moment—flushed and liberated by alcohol —the more attractive to a certain order of intellecl? It is because she is indeed free. She is freed from the old moral law of her being. The guardian, who makes his home on the highest brain-level is drugged and asleep. All the other qualities of the woman Hash out, rejoicing in the new-found liberty. The mind tastes the sudden joys of lawlessness. The emotional nature laughs and takes the air. And what you see is the real female animal, which is a strangely wonderful thing. Here it i s —frank as sunlight or running water. And you watch it as you would a slim, wild colt play in a meadow. Riderless it runs, without bit or bridle. And makes for fascination. Do you wonder men look at it with approval, in that one glad hour of its lawlessness? This is no longer woman, aspiring to perfect the higher part of her nature—working consciously on the upper

BY VANCE THOMPSON Decoration Hajry Stoner

level, or, it may be, merely yielding to atavistic impulses toward right conduct; she is the female animal, living downward, beautiful and unaware of sin, as a thing that runs lightly in the forest. Now you are not going to destroy the pandemic plague—if you want to call it that—of alcohol, until you get both the social organisation and the business world on your side. What was most vehemently done in the past was to attack the alcohol habit on its social side. There has been an immense amount of emotional eloquence poured out on the evil wrought by alcohol upon the social structure. That was good [work in its way. Pictures of the drunkard's home—its squalor and cruelty—doubtless frightened many a man from drink. And photographs (displayed on a screen) of the moderate drinker's indecent liver did something to turn men to sober, euthenic ways of living. But the battle against alcohol could not be won in this way. You cannot fight a poison habit with rhetoric or with pictures on a screen. You cannot frighten a man away from a social peril by appealing to his sense of fear. The best, and starkest kind of man goes forward to meet the fear and put it to the test. Youth is not to be daunted by the picture of the hobnailed liver. You cannot terrorise a boy—in the forth-going valor of his youth—with prophecies of the madhouse or the cell. He knows he is not going there; lie has taken, he would tell you, the safe road of the moderate drinker.

It was not until "big business"— cold-blooded, unsentimental, mathematical, rigidly scientific —stepped in and told him that moderate drinking was not safe, being, in the Medico-Actuarial phrase, "decidedly unsafe," that he was content to listen. Then he said: "There must be something in it." You can sec him going jauntily into the life insurance office.

"It's all right," he says, confidently; "I'm a moderate drinker—l can drink and be sober —in fact I keep well within Anstie's limit."

"Anstie's limit," says the MedicoActuarial one scornfully; "that belongs to the dark ages of medical science, to a period when society was organised to suit 'boosy' people. Let's have a look at you!" And with phlegmatic immodesty, Medico-Actuarial science goes through him with a lighted candle —peering at his iungs and lights and liver, at heart and brain—notably at the brain and its Functional Levels: then throws him out or bets (in terms of insurance) that he will live so many alcoholic years, and no more. I am assuming that this young man was not in an extra hazardous way of life. Had he belonged to the following hazardous classes he had never got so far as the examination room, in the more conservative insurance offices:

"Retail liquor dealers —not accepted. "Employees in distilleries —not accepted. "Saloon-keepers and bar-tenders —not accepted. "Travelling salesmen for liquor houses —not accepted. "Only in special cases are wholesale dealers and restaurant-keepers, who sell liquor, accepted." And the list might be extended, for brewery salesmen, collectors, mechanics, bottlers, labourers, and the like are heavily penalised when they take out life-insurance policies. Here are the figures for the moderate drinking men: Total number of years of exposure to risk, all ages 'lfi(i,9l3 Expected deaths by Om tabic .. .. 8,911 Actual deaths 8,947 And here are those for the abstainers: Total number of years of exposure to risk 398,010 Expected deaths by Om table .. .. fi,899 Actual deaths 5,12-1 What was the scientific expectation? Of the moderate drinkers, 8911 were due to die; they paid in 37 lives more than were expected. On the other hand, G899 abstainers were statistically expected to die; and 1775 simply refused to keep the appointment—and went on living. You can figure it out; the differences between the percentages of actual deaths to expected deaths, as between drinkers and non-drinlcers, was 21.G per cent.; the death-rate for drinkers was 35 per cent, higher than it was for non-drinkers — which makes for thought. On an average, the moderate drinker pays from 10 to 13 years of his life for the pleasure he gets out of his small tipples of beer or wine or whisky. Verily, the moderate drinker is not standing still at a mythical halfway house—he is going on. Even though he does knock 10 or 13 years off his life, the chances are he will be thrown on the asli-heap before death steps in, compassionately, and takes him. Economically, there is no place for him. And, since he is morally—if not mentally—impaired, society, striving for sanity, looks upon him without approbation. lie's the one-legged man in the race.